Ecoustics’ Jeremy Sikora shares his journey acquiring and restoring the rare Fisher 400 Tube Receiver.

The Budget Audiophiler is going to begin this week with a little rant. I need to vent about McIntosh. The folks in Binghamton have my utmost respect, but they have created a problem that they can’t fix. I’m laying my obsessive love for tube amplifiers at their feet. I remember the first time I saw a McIntosh MC240 stereo tube amplifier and just getting lost in the moment; almost becoming transfixed by the industrial piece of art and its illuminated exposed tubes.

At some point, I will own a McIntosh tube amplifier, but the cult surrounding these gorgeous vintage pieces has pushed the prices well out of reach. I’m a practical person. I have a normal day job like everyone else, kids, mortgage payments, and I did what any other sane person in my position would do – I sold one of my organs as a down payment on that amplifier. Just kidding. Instead of obsessing in the short-term, I began conducting research and one amplifier began showing up in almost all of my searches; the Fisher 400. 

And so begins our little journey.

I’m a hunter. Not like Steve McQueen in his last film with the cool car chase in the tower in Chicago that ends rather violently in the river below – but a hunter of vintage audio. I hunt for audio bargains online and can smell one when I find it. The more I read about the Fisher 400 tube receiver, the more I realized that I might have discovered something wonderful that I never knew that I wanted. Finding a bargain in this scenario was most likely not going to pan out, but I was going to try.

Growing up in the 1980s, I remember Fisher as a manufacturer of mid-fi (I’m being polite) receivers and stereo systems. Sanyo had purchased the company and brand name in 1975 (from Emerson who bought the brand in 1969) and nothing was ever the same. The products produced in the 1960s and 1980s are miles part; both in terms of sound quality, and the level of industrial design. The original Fisher products were gorgeous and designed for people who cared about sound quality. 

The clarity from this amplifier manufactured almost 6 decades ago was startling. The detail, transparency, and level of engagement was superb.

Avery Fisher started the Fisher Radio Corporation in 1945, and in the 1960s they focused on high-end tube audio components, consoles, and phonographs. The models that caught my eye were the 400, 500, and 800 (and their variants). Fisher was actually the first manufacturer to offer audio separates; McIntosh, Marantz, H.H. Scott, and Harmon Kardon would eventually do the same. “The Fisher” was the actual brand name that was marketed.

Fisher’s first receiver was the model 500, a mono AM/FM receiver using two EL37 output tubes. It had a brass-plated face panel and an optional mahogany or “blonde” wooden case.

All three had different features and power ratings, but they were all tube receivers or integrated amplifiers. I set out to find one of these models, but I was seduced by the iconic “bird” icon featured on the 400 and 800 model receivers. The more I hunted for one of these tube receivers – the more I found myself drawn to all of the marketing material and catalogs that the brand produced.

They knew back then what a lot of modern brands forget – this is about lifestyle.

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This article originally appeared at ecoustics.com and an intro has been published here with permission.

Read the full article: https://www.ecoustics.com/articles/fisher-400-tube-stereo-receiver/